Ekeing - life on the street

I hate this grinding poverty— To toil, and pinch, and borrow, And be for ever haunted by The spectre of to-morrow. It breaks the strong heart of a man, It crushes out his spirit— Do what he will, do what he can, However high his merit! Henry Lawson (1896)

This is my contribution to the Weekend in Black and White community.

Burnished bannister

The Chard Stairs across Forbes Street, 1925

This is my contribution to the Weekend in Black and White community.

Concrete and clay beneath my feet

Some of the inner city suburbs of Sydney are pocket-handkerchief size, no more than a handful of city blocks. Think of East Sydney, Darlinghurst, Wooloomooloo, Kings Cross, Potts Point, Rushcutters Bay, Elizabeth Bay. This auto repair shop is in Bourke St, not far from William St. Hard to tell whether it is East Sydney or Darlinghurst.

It uses the down-stairs half of a terrace for access into the rear yard. My guess is the terrace dates from 1850-1870. If the centre of the city is the Town Hall, this is probably ten minutes distant.

Ici et là - The bottle shop

'Here & There' is a Wednesday series dedicated to shops. The 'here' is the area around Paddington. The 'there' is generally La Rive Gauche de Paris, especially the single-digit arrondissements. I am interested in how people live, not in retailing per se.

Oxford Street, East Sydney (Adult shop next door is a clue to this location)

In Sydney, bottled alcohol is sold in stand-alone bottle shops, bottle sections within large supermarkets, or bottle shops attached to hotels. Our hotels are similar to English pubs.

Cellar, Rue Bourgogne, 7eme, Paris

In Paris, bottled alcohol is sold through bottle shops called 'caves' which translates as 'cellar'. I think their equivalent of our pub/hotel, is the neighbourhood bar/cafe, although I do not think many bottles are sold through bars for take home consumption. Yeah, yeah, the car is what is known in the trade as 'an added bonus'.

Ocean Street, Woollahra

Nomenclature is interesting here. We call them bottle shops. We call them grog shops. And we also call them a bottle-o. There are a few chains of very large warehouse-size bottle shops, but these are usually owned by either of the two large supermarket chains.

Oxford Street, East Sydney

Just keep slogging away

Albert Camus, Return to Tipasa (1952)

I love a sunburnt country A land of sweeping plains Of ragged mountain ranges Of droughts and flooding rains. I love her far horizons I love her jewel sea Her beauty and her terror The wide, brown land for me. Dorothea Mackellar (1904)

Both photographs taken on diagonal corners of the intersection of Burton & Palmer Street, East Sydney. The flower is a cerise Crepe Myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica).

Four corners in the East

These corners are all in the first valley or upon the first ridge east of Sydney town and were established between 1820 and 1850. Terrace houses entered a restoration phase in the 1960s and much of the area is under a preservation order.

Five Ways, Paddington

Stanley Street, East Sydney

Burton Street, East Sydney

Walter Street, Moore Park

A member of the Everyday Life community

Sunday in my City - A tale of two cities

Above - Lined with pavement plantings of immature chestnut trees, the 'rue' end of Glenmore Road, abuts Oxford Street opposite the sandstone wall surrounding Victoria Barracks. Winding narrowly among 1840s workmen cottages and the three-storey, double-fronted terraces of the emerging mercantile class, ‘The Intersection’ arouses faux-European sensibilities, whilst demanding genuine Champs-Elysees designer prices. This is definitely not a ‘clone-town’ neighbourhood. Alannah Hill is directly across the road.

Below – Stream Way is the shortest of back alleys running adjacent to William Street, the main thoroughfare from the Town Hall up the hill to Kings Cross. The stream trickled down from the cliffs of Darlinghurst to the waters of Wooloomooloo Bay. This entrancing wall-scape was buckled and warped by a fire belching out from the cellar of ‘The William’ an early opener at the rear of The Australian Museum.


A member of the Sunday in my City community.

In praise of ordinary people

Statues of notable people crowd the city. They can be found in landscaped parks, on busy street corners, on the ediface of standstone buildings, and in cultured courtyards. But what of ordinary people, of the hoi-poloi, the madding crowd. Where are their memorials? I went in search of some.

Driving East along New South Head Road, you will come upon this stunning art-work on the left part way up the ridge just before Edgecliff Station. She is the "lady of Edgecliff", with various dedications over the years since she first arrived in 1989. Always drawn from the back, she is regularly updated with different surroundings and mottos. This version is dedicated to "Rebecca - life is a palette of colour to express beauty". The artist is Bruno Dutot.

A row of terraces is being restored on the corner of Bourke and Stanley Streets in East Sydney. Once the restoration is complete, this face will be lost to us. I think of it as a "dead christ", but more likely it is a dedication to a former tenant who passed away from HIV and other needle-borne diseases.

Lisa Marie Smith was serving time in a Bangkok gaol for being a drug courier. However, in early 1997, the Australian Embassy in Athens renewed her passport, someone paid her way out of the gaol and she simply disappeared. This memorial is on Oxford Street just before the Paddington RSL club on the left.

It is important that we remember the little people, whether they are goodies or baddies. This is the first of an occasional series.